Artificial Intelligence Engineer

Vallum Associates; Exeter; On-site; GBP 111,000 - 166,000; Full time

Job summary

Vallum Associates seeks an experienced AI / GenAI Engineer to design, build and prototype practical AI solutions within a leading UK energy services environment. The role is hands-on, focusing on turning ideas into working PoCs and production-ready solutions for the Service Management function.

Based in Exeter with two days on site, you will collaborate with engineering, data, security and business stakeholders to deliver secure, scalable AI capabilities using LLMs, embeddings and RAG, across

Qualifications

• Hands-on AI / GenAI engineering experience.
• Prototyping AI apps, prototypes and PoCs.
• Strong Python development skills.
• Practical experience with LLMs and LLM APIs.
• Experience with RAG, embeddings and vector databases.
• Experience building AI agents / agentic workflows is desirable.

Responsibilities

• Design and build AI and GenAI solutions for Service Management use cases.
• Develop working prototypes and Proofs of Concept.
• Build solutions using LLMs, APIs, RAG, agents and automation technologies.
• Integrate AI capabilities with existing enterprise systems and data.
• Evaluate models and approaches for different use cases.
• Take concepts through design, build and testing to production.

Skills

Hands-on AI engineering

Prototyping & PoC development

Python development

LLMs & APIs

Prompt engineering

Cloud AI (AWS/Azure/GCP)

Tools

LLMs & APIs

RAG / embeddings

Vector databases

Agentic workflows

Job description

AI / GenAI Engineer - Leading Energy Company - Contract

Location: Exeter - 2 days per week onsite

Duration: 6-month rolling contract

IR35: Inside IR35

We're supporting a leading organisation within the UK energy sector looking for an experienced AI / GenAI Engineer to design, build and prototype practical AI solutions across its Service Management function.

This is a hands‑on engineering role. We need someone who can work with teams to understand a problem or use case and then personally build the solution - taking ideas through prototyping, PoC development and towards production implementation.

The role will involve:

• Designing and building AI and GenAI solutions for real Service Management use cases
• Developing working prototypes and Proofs of Concept
• Building solutions using LLMs, APIs, RAG, agents and automation technologies
• Integrating AI capabilities with existing enterprise systems, data and workflows
• Evaluating models and technical approaches for different use cases
• Taking solutions from initial concept through technical design, build and testing
• Working with Service Management teams to understand requirements and translate them into technical solutions
• Working alongside engineering, architecture, data and security teams to move successful PoCs towards production
• Ensuring solutions consider security, scalability, governance and enterprise standards

What we're looking for:

• Strong hands‑on AI / GenAI engineering experience
• Proven experience personally building AI applications, prototypes and PoCs
• Strong development skills, ideally Python
• Practical experience working with LLMs and LLM APIs
• Experience with RAG, embeddings, vector databases and prompt engineering
• Experience building AI agents / agentic workflows would be highly desirable
• Experience integrating AI solutions through APIs and existing enterprise systems
• Cloud AI experience across AWS, Azure or GCP
• Strong understanding of taking AI solutions beyond experimentation towards production
• Comfortable working directly with business stakeholders to understand problems and translate them into working solutions
• Service Management / ITSM experience would be advantageous
• Energy / utilities experience would be beneficial

The key requirement is someone who can actually build. We're looking for an engineer who can understand a business problem, determine how AI could solve it and then personally develop a working solution to demonstrate and prove the use case.

Please note: this role requires travel to Exeter twice per week.